Daily Verse | Job 34:21 “His eyes are on the ways of men; he sees their every step.”
Monday’s Reading: Job 35-37
Monday and off we go into a new week.
Over the weekend I upgraded my phone, so that may have had something to do with what I’m going to share with you this morning. I have a call blocker on my phone that silences calls that it determines are solicitations or nuisance calls. Most of the time, the call is shown as the number with a notation underneath that says where it originated from (i.e. Mableton, GA) or it is labeled “unknown,” which I think means the blocker can’t determine from where the call originated.
I’ve been getting a lot of (202) area code calls, which are from Washington, DC. Since they are silenced and none leave a message, I don’t know who is calling, but my guess it is the RNC trying to hit me up for a donation. All of those calls are labeled the same way, with the phone number and the notation that it originated in Washington, DC.
After I got my new phone set up, I got a notification of a call, but it didn’t follow the previous pattern. Instead, it showed me this:
“Scam Likely” — from Washington, DC. I almost bust my gut laughing.
Is that not the truth? If the last few years have taught us anything, it’s that Washington, DC is nothing but a scam.
We need to pass the bill to find out what’s in the bill.
Hillary Clinton was “extremely careless” but not criminal in running her government emails through a private email server.
Trump is a Russian asset. Trump is a racist. Trump cheated on his taxes.
We need two weeks to flatten the curve.
The vaccines are safe.
Hunter Biden’s laptop is Russian disinformation.
Joe Biden received the largest number of votes ever in American history.
The withdrawal in Afghanistan was carefully planned.
Inflation will only be transitory.
Current gas prices are because of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
That little bit of serendipity on my phone summed up Washington in two words that I couldn’t have come up with in days of trying. It’s now my go-to phrase.
When it comes to anything in Washington, DC, these days, we should all pause a moment and think, “Scam Likely.”
Daily Verse | Micah 2:11 If a liar and deceiver comes and says, ‘I will prophesy for you plenty of wine and beer,’ he would be just the prophet for this people!
Happy Friday, Broadsiders! Some of you have an unhealthy preoccupation with potato salad.
If you’re wondering why America is no longer looking like America, you have to search no further than the 1965 Immigration Reform Act. Sponsored and pushed through the Senate by uber-liberal Ted Kennedy, the immigration act “snuffed out the generous quotas for immigrants from the countries that had traditionally populated America—England, Ireland, and Germany—and added ‘family reunification’ policies, allowing recent immigrants to bring in their relatives, and those relatives to bring in their relatives, until entire Somali villages have relocated to Minneapolis and Muslim cabdrivers are refusing to transport passengers with dogs or alcohol.”
These days, leveling any criticism against the immigrants coming into our country is verboten, especially by middle-aged white men. It doesn’t matter that up until 56 years ago, the majority of immigrants were white Europeans who came from similar cultures and that the “browning” of America was a deliberate government policy to bring in new Democrat voters who would be dependent on the government.
Thus, unskilled third-world peasants are favored immigrants. That’s why we have more than 30 million Mexicans and other Latin American immigrants here illegally, with hundreds of thousands more arriving over the southern border and released across the United States by the illegitimate junta in Washington, D.C.
None of the oligarchy in D.C. care about what these immigrants from third-world nations are doing to our national culture or what the downstream effect might be on natural-born citizens. Nowhere is this clearer than in the thousands of Muslims we’ve imported from across the Middle East and Africa and, most recently, Afghanistan.
Of the over 60,000 individuals who have been brought into the United States—and I will give you approximate figures and I will verify them, approximately 7 percent have been United States citizens. Approximately 6 percent have been lawful permanent residents. Approximately 3 percent have been individuals who are in receipt of the special immigrant visas. The balance of that population are individuals whose applications have not yet been processed for approval who may qualify as SIVs and have not yet applied, who qualify or would qualify—I should say—as P-1 or P-2 refugees who have been employed by the united states government in Afghanistan and are otherwise vulnerable afghan nationals, such as journalists, human rights advocates, et cetera.
In other words, more than 50,000 of those refugees are now on American soil and have not been vetted. Why is this important? There’s this:
They didn’t leave Afghanistan very long ago, and so it is understandable that Bahrullah Noori and Mohammad Haroon Imaad, two Afghan evacuees at Fort McCoy, Wisconsin, would behave as if they were still there. The Justice Department announced Wednesday that a federal grand jury in Wisconsin charged Noori with “attempting to engage in a sexual act with a minor using force against that person, and with three counts of engaging in a sexual act with a minor, with one count alleging the use of force.” Imaad was charged with “assaulting his spouse by strangling and suffocating her.” The alleged crimes took place at Fort McCoy, where Noori and Imaad have been staying in anticipation of being placed in some lucky American neighborhood. The Justice Department said nothing about how both men were just following religious and cultural norms that other Afghan refugees are likely to follow as well, or about the implications of that fact for the entire Afghan refugee resettlement project.
There is another reason why both the administration and the media would rather have this story go away, amid the chaos at the Southern border and just after the catastrophe in Afghanistan: Alowemer, 23, came to the United States from Syria as a refugee when he was 18. Yet he doesn’t exactly fit the image of a grateful refugee, eager to become a part of our glorious multicultural mosaic. He told investigators, according to the criminal complaint against him, that “his motivation to detonate a device at the Church was to support the cause of ISIS and to inspire other ISIS sympathizers in the United States to join together and commit similar acts in the name of ISIS.” He added that he “also targeted the Church, which he described as Christian and Nigerian, in order to ‘take revenge for our [ISIS] brothers in Nigeria.’” Christians are suffering fierce persecution from Muslims in Nigeria, but as far as Alowemer was concerned, this meant only that they were infidels at war with Allah, and he thirsted for revenge.
So we have three Afghan Muslim [updated 9/26] refugees who have brought they’re values here to the United States. Exceptions? Maybe, but I wouldn’t place any money on it. The elite oligarchy hates us normal Americans and could give a rip about what some unrefined immigrant might unleash on Christian churches or on an unsuspecting teenage girl.
Diversity and inclusion are our strength!
There are tens of millions foreigners here illegally in the United States and our lawless Resident and his staff of junior commies are bringing in tens of thousands more every month. They aren’t vetted; they’re just given a date at which to show up to court and then released into the interior of the United States until their court date, for which only a small fraction of immigrants show up.
The Left gets to celebrate the invasion of our country and the destruction of our unique American culture, while the Right is shamed as racist for questioning the policies. We’re not allowed to say, “Why is so much immigration a good thing? What’s wrong with ‘white’ American culture? I LIKE American culture,”—or we’re called racist and xenophobic.
Nevertheless, those are questions we should be asking and demanding answers for.
Daily Verse | Ezekiel 30:10-11 “This is what the Sovereign Lord says: “‘I will put an end to the hordes of Egypt by the hands of Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon. He and his army—the most ruthless of nations— will be brought in to destroy the land.'”
Happy Tuesday my friends. I may already have asked this, but it bears repeating: why are packages of bacon not resealable?
The day after a holiday feels like picking up a novel that I had put down and asking, “Where was I?”
Oh right. The demented, sour old man in the White House and his junta who are ruining this country. Joey “The Befuddled” Biden, Resident until January 2025 or until the Adderall has lost its effectiveness and his handlers can no longer hide the extent of his dementia. Check that; we can see how bad it is already and have known since his campaign that he had no legs for this role.
“We have six airplanes at Mazar-i-Sharif airport, six airplanes, with American citizens on them as I speak, also with these interpreters, and the Taliban is holding them hostage for demands right now,” he said on Fox News Sunday morning. “State has cleared these flights, and the Taliban will not let them leave the airport.”
McCaul added that the Taliban “are not clearing the airplanes to depart” and that the people trying to flee have “sat at the airport for the last couple of days,” in part because “the Taliban want something in exchange.”
The White House and U.S. State Department are holding up charter planes at an airport in Afghanistan’s Mazar-i-Sharif that would transport 19 Americans and 40 SIV holders to Albania, David Rohde, the executive editor at NewYorker.com said in an interview Monday.
“I want to repeat that,” he said. “It is the State Department and the White House” holding up the planes. He said the civilian effort has been “far more ambitious, far more dynamic and far more successful than what the administration has been doing.”
On Sunday, Rep. Mike McCaul, R-Texas, told Fox News that the Taliban has blocked Americans aboard six planes at Mazar-i-Sharif International Airport. Three Americans involved in the private evacuation of those still in the country also blasted the State Department for preventing the evacuation flights from leaving the country.
Rick Clay, who operates the private rescue group “PlanB,” told Fox News that the State Department is preventing the flights from leaving Afghanistan. Clay has roughly 4,500 names on his manifest, 800 of which have been turned over to the U.S. State Department for vetting.
Two other American individuals separately involved in evacuation efforts made similar claims that the State Department is the sole entity preventing their charter flights from leaving Afghanistan. Fox News declined to name the two other people to avoid jeopardizing ongoing rescue efforts.
“This is zero place to be negotiating with American lives. Those are our people standing on the tarmac and all it takes is a f****ing phone call,” one of those individuals told Fox News.
What could possibly be the State Department’s reason for delaying the flights and for not allowing them to land in neighboring countries that have agreed to take in the refugees? Maybe this: “Biden doesn’t want Americans at home to know how many people he abandoned and is now directing the State Department to force countries to block private rescue flights from landing.”
If true, it’s callous and traitorous, a putrid mix of pride and power that puts his own reputation over that of the lives of fellow Americans. But as I’ve said before, this is an anti-American junta.
According to video released by CBS the Taliban will not clear the airplanes for takeoff full of American citizens and green card holders. There are a total of eleven planes being held captive and eight of them were chartered by conservative radio host Glenn Beck.
The State Department told CBS News the flights will be allowed to land in Qatar “if and when the Taliban agrees to takeoff.” A senior congressional source told CBS News that the Taliban is “basically holding them hostage to get more out of the Americans.”
This is one of the most jacked-up political failures in modern memory. Joey “The Buffoon” Biden already has blood on his hands and we all know if this had been Trump who spectacularly failed like this, Pelosi, Schumer and Schiff would be calling for impeachment (or worse).
Their silence is deafening, which just proves how relentlessly partisan they are.
Daily Verse | Ezekiel 14:12-14 Son of man, if a country sins against me by being unfaithful and I stretch out my hand against it to cut off its food supply and send famine upon it and kill its men and their animals, even if these three men—Noah, Daniel and Job—were in it, they could save only themselves by their righteousness, declares the Sovereign Lord.
Happy Thursday, my friends. The llamas in my dreams are all wearing scarves and hats made out of alpaca fleece.
The disaster in Afghanistan is by far the most humiliating military debacle in the history of the United States, greater even than our ignominious defeat in Vietnam. And the man bearing the utmost responsibility for it is Resident Joe Biden, perhaps the most incompetent man to ever occupy the White House.
“I need not tell you the perception around the world and in parts of Afghanistan, I believe, is that things are not going well in terms of the fight against the Taliban,” Biden said.
“And there is a need, whether it is true or not, there is a need to project a different picture.”
Biden also offered aid if Ghani could publicly project he had a plan to control the situation in Afghanistan, saying: “We will continue to provide close air support, if we know what the plan is.”
Some GOP lawmakers expressed outrage over details of the call, even calling for Biden’s resignation.
“I’m not going to get into private, diplomatic conversations or leaked transcripts of phone calls,” Psaki said at a White House briefing.
Funny, I seem to remember when leaked transcripts of phone calls led to impeachment proceedings.
Is that still the rule or nah?
So Joe Biden was asking the Afghan president to lie on his (Joe’s) behalf, to create the illusion that everything was fine.
On top of that, we also learned that the military had a lock on the Kabul airport suicide bomber from a Predator drone prior to him getting to the airport. When asked for permission to take the shot, they were denied by this administration. The bomber, as you know, went on to kill 13 servicemen and women.
They knew who it was, when it was to happen, and where it was to happen. They found the guy, locked on him and were then denied the chance to take him out before he blew himself up. But go ahead and impeach a guy for talking to another government leader about the crap Joe Biden was himself pulling in Ukraine all those many years ago.
Daily Verse | Ezekiel 11:19 “I will give them an undivided heart and put a new spirit in them; I will remove from them their heart of stone and give them a heart of flesh.”
September 1 and the work roller coaster has hit the apex of mid-week and is ready to race down through Thursday and Friday to the weekend. Thanks for joining me again this morning.
We’re out. The last American flight left Afghanistan 24 hours before Joey B’s self-imposed deadline of August 31, as though he was over-delivering for the American people. Too bad he didn’t take those additional 24 hours to get the rest of our citizens out as he promised.
Some associated news accompanying the end of our mission there:
An Afghan interpreter who helped save then-Senator Joe Biden’s life in 2008 after the helicopter that he, Senator John Kerry and Senator Chuck Hagel were riding in was forced to land in a snowstorm in a remote part of the country. Now the interpreter, known only as Mohammed, is pleading with Biden to get him and his family out of Afghanistan.
Mohammed’s attempt to get into the U.S. has been held up for months by red tape. Veterans, who served with the interpreter on the more than “100 firefights,” made appeal after appeal to to get him out. He got to the Kabul airport, but when he was told his wife and children would not be able to come with him, he left and went into hiding.
Now Mohammed is begging Biden to get them all out: “Hello Mr. President: Save me and my family. Don’t forget me here.”
Good luck, Mohammed. Sugar Cone Joey didn’t even care enough to get all American citizens out.
And now, just like thirteen years ago, our rulers want to use a crisis they created as justification to ram through what they always wanted to do anyway. Which, in this case, is to resettle a hundred or two hundred thousand (the number varies depending on who’s speaking) foreigners with no tradition of liberty—who are indeed from a culture deeply alien, even hostile to, Western civilizational norms—in your communities.
The justification for this is already being trumpeted: we must save our “allies,” translators and such, who helped us throughout our twenty-year failed experiment. This argument, though offered in bad faith, is effective because the vast majority of American consider abandoning an ally to a deadly enemy dishonorable.
But does anyone really believe that America has, or ever had—even over the duration of two decades—200,000 “allies” in Afghanistan? That we ever employed even a fraction of that number as translators? The claim is risible on its face.
The regime has in any case already admitted that, of the roughly 111,600 Afghans (as compared to 5,400 American citizens) already evacuated, it has no idea who the vast majority of them are. Our masters tell us that we must save “allies” and “translators”—and then in the next breath admit that they’re indiscriminately taking anyone. People who act and speak this brazenly do so out of a deep reservoir of contempt and hatred. The message is “We can do and say whatever we want; we can lie and contradict ourselves within the same sentence, and there’s nothing you can do about it. In fact, if you object, or even notice, we will use our power to crush you.”
As a believer, I welcome the opportunity to share the love of Christ with an Afghani. As an American citizen, however, I don’t trust the government rulers who are obviously seeking to overthrow the American experiment in freedom by dividing and conquering. Bringing Afghans here where it is unlikely the majority will assimilate but isolate themselves in communities closed to outsiders will continue to fracture our society. American culture is going the way of the dodo.
So now that our 20-year “war” in Afghanistan is over, what happens now? Nearly 90 retired generals and admirals signed a letter urging Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and Chairman of the Joint Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Milley should resign. Their reasoning is that the catastrophic failure in Afghanistan has enormous consequences “‘and will reverberate for decades beginning with the safety of Americans and Afghans’ left behind under Taliban rule.”
They argued that upon learning about President Joe Biden’s plan to close the Bagram Air Base, both Milley and Austin should have “recommended against this dangerous withdrawal in the strongest possible terms.” If the president went forward with it against their advice, they should have “resigned in protest as a matter of conscience and public statement.”
[…]
When Biden decided to hold firm with the Aug. 31 withdrawal date, the senior military leaders “had a choice” to make, Arbuckle added.
“They could either salute and go try to execute the orders as best as they can,” or they could’ve resigned and told Biden, “I cannot in all good conscience follow that order because I understand the serious implications coming from it.”
“We need to make it clear that the ultimate decision making in anything that has to do with conflicts of warfare is the president of the United States,” he continued. “He decides … all matters regarding warfare. So it all comes back to the political side.”
You know that your tax dollars and mine funded the 20-year war. Did you know the government gave billions to contractors?
Over the last 20 years of war in Afghanistan, the U.S. spent $89 billion in taxpayer dollars to fund the building and training of the Afghan National Army with an estimated $2.26 trillion in total operating costs funded by U.S. taxpayers.
Reminder: government doesn’t produce anything to collect its receipts, which it calls “revenue” — as though it were a business conducting transactions with the public. It simply decrees that it is allowed to take obscene amounts of money from you and me and then does it. I believe we fought a war of independence over excessive taxation.
Seven buses of “orphans, Christians and 25 American citizens” were turned away at the Kabul airport after former Recon Marine Chad Robichaux coordinated the rescue efforts. Here’s what he wrote to a friend:
“Our two guys on the ground spent all night rescuing 7 buses loads of people: 300 orphans, 100 Christians, 25 Americans,” the message read. “The families of the pilots that have been shuttling our flights.”
“After getting them on the airport and into a holding area, the Colonel over the 82nd had the whole group kicked off the airport and into the hands of the Taliban because he didn’t like the fact that we were out there rescuing people,” Robichaux claimed. “Essentially murdered them.”
An “update” from Robichaux said, “We have unofficial intel that they ended up in the hands of the Taliban.”
“As the country’s first national humane organization and largest certifier of animal welfare in the world, it sickens us to sit idly by and watch these brave dogs who valiantly served our country be put to death or worse,” Ganzert said.
Another group, Veteran Sheepdogs of America, said on Monday it was attempting to get 51 working dogs out of Kabul. On Tuesday, the group said it was able to raise $1.67 million to charter a 737 plane to evacuate the animals, but needed another $500,000 to replace an animal rescue operation that “fell through.”
It’s all so pathetic and humiliating. But leave it to president 45 to bring a sane American message to America.
Daily Verse | Ezekiel 5:15 “You will be a reproach and taunt, a warning and an object of horror to the nations around you when I inflict punishment on you in anger and in wrath and with stinging rebuke. I the Lord have spoken.”
Happy Tuesday, my Broadside friends and the last day of August. What if tacos didn’t start with a “T” but you still wanted to have them on Tuesdays?
I’m becoming more and more convinced that the demoralizing chaos we’re seeing in Afghanistan is an intentional act of sabotage and is an impeachable offense. There is no way that the United States is this incompetent. It’s true that there’s no ignition for Biden’s cognition, but there are supposed to be several checks and balances in place to limit the damage any one branch of the government can do.
Congress can demand answers, can close the checkbook, or can impeach the Resident if necessary. Trump was impeached over a phone call. Yet we hear nothing from the either side of the aisle that gives us any hope that they’re fighting this corruptocrat and his cronies on behalf of normal Americans.
The military is supposed to an apolitical civilian institution that is wise in the ways of war. Yet, it is clear that they are either following orders that are destructive to America’s reputation most likely because they’ve been overtaken by ‘woke’ leadership that started under Barack Hussein Obama, who replaced nearly 200 generals, colonels and flag officers in the U.S. militaryover five years with men and women who supported his socialist views in an unprecedented purge.
We were warned back then that Obama’s purge was a huge mistake. It wasn’t a “mistake.” It was the purposeful degradation of the greatest military the world has ever seen.
Add to the wreck that’s Afghanistan the invasion of illegals across our southern border and the ongoing population displacement; the Peking Lung Pox lock downs, mask mandates, the vaccination jab pressure campaign and vaccine passports; the shut down of the Keystone pipeline and high gas prices along with huge inflationary pressures; the unrestrained rioting in cities across the country with very few criminal charges or prosecutions; the January 6 breach of Capitol Hill being made more than what it was, and a black officer murdering an unarmed white woman during that breach who claims he “saved multiple lives” while being absolved of any crime; and the irrational spending campaign of $3.5 trillion dollar budget along with a $1 trillion infrastructure bill — and people are understandably alarmed at the near-anarchy that has engulfed the nation in just seven months.
The big question not being asked is, “Why?” Why is this administration allowing everything to go to hell?
Doug Wilson wrote a post on Monday that he described as “one of the more important things I have written. Not to overstate it, or to puff it up, or to give way to ungodly hype, but I do believe we are converging on a crisis moment in our nation, and the way we respond to that crisis moment when it comes will be critical.”
He goes on:
I saw a meme float by the other day that I thought summed up one part of our situation quite nicely. The sentiment expressed was pungent, provocative, and pithy. “You cannot screw up a country this bad in seven months unless it’s on purpose.”
That seems like a compelling observation, except for just one part of it. And that would be the question why? How would that benefit anybody? Cui bono? Who stands to benefit from a deliberate dismantling and degradation of the American way of life? Surely no elected official, right?
He then pivots to exactly what he thinks is the “why” behind the “what” (my emphasis):
I believe that middle America is being deliberately exasperated in order to provoke an unseemly and gaudy reaction sometime prior to the midterms. In other words, I believe that the ruling elites are picking a fight, trying to provoke unrest, and are doing so in order to be able to justify measures that are genuinely repressive. Repressive measures in the aftermath of some big incident could be trumpeted as “saving the republic” from her enemies. But if they do it without such an incident, the power grab would be just naked and kind of out there.
If that reaction finally happens—say a right wing protest at a federal building somewhere turns violent—it will be used as an excuse for emergency measures. The reaction from middle America will have to be violent enough to justify the emergency measures, but not violent enough to accomplish much of anything for the participants.
On top of that, the resultant emergency measures will need to be robust enough to alter or delay the results of the midterms. This is because the party in power almost always loses ground in the midterms, and if that pattern were to hold true in 2022, then the Democrats would lose both the House and the Senate. Now in the current climate, do you believe that they are in any frame of mind to lose the House and the Senate? I didn’t think so. Joe Biden is about as sharp as a pound of wet liver. Can you imagine a feckless Biden with a Congress controlled by the opposition? Sitting on top of a gigantic 300 million strong rugby scrum?
He then counsels caution.
And so the takeaway lesson for conservatives is: don’t take the bait. Under no circumstances should we take the bait. I think I may have mentioned before that we should not take the bait.
This is a hard bit of advice to hear, because I know people who are angry at the destructive nature of this administration and who suspect a puppeteer behind the scenes telling Biden when he can and can’t take questions and which reporters to call on.
We’re being scammed.
So the counsel to not act creates a tension between the fear that we’re losing our country and needing to wait until 2022 when we will (presumably) win back Congress and apply the brakes to the runaway train we’re riding. That is, if we can get a fair and honest election anywhere.
In the meantime, Joe Biden checks his watch during the “dignified transfer ceremony” at Dover Air Force base as the bodies of our murdered service members are brought home, and falls asleep (or, at a minimum, refuses eye contact) during a conversation with the Israeli Prime Minister.
I know I’m not alone in my thinking that this is “malevolent incompetence” (Roger Kimball). There is something deeply disturbing about all of this, and I’m afraid that the reason isn’t something we will be happy to learn.
Buy ammo and keep praying that the Lord will intervene.
Daily Verse | Lamentations 3:22-23 Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.
Good morning my friends. A new week and as the verse above says, the Lord’s compassions are new every morning and his faithfulness is great. That’s good news for those of us who watch in dismay the foolishness on display across the world.
The names of our dead in Afghanistan were published over the weekend. They are:
Rylee McCollum, 20 David L. Espinoza, 20 Dylan R. Merola, 20 Jared M. Schmitz, 20 Kareem M. Nikoui, 20 Maxton Soviak, 22 Hunter Lopez, 22 Humberto A. Sanchez, 22 Daegan Page, 23 Nicole L. Gee, 23 Ryan Knauss, 23 Johanny Rosario Pichardo, 25 Darin T. Hoover, 31
The Epoch Times carried a short profile of each person, which you can read here.
Kathy McCollum, the mother of Lance Cpl. Rylee McCollum vented her grief at Joe Biden, who is absolutely responsible for the wreck occurring in Afghanistan (and don’t let him or his enablers tell you otherwise). Listen if you can bear it.
Mother of U.S. Marine Rylee McCollum, who died in the Kabul bombing: “all you Democrats … who voted for [Biden], you just killed my son …[He’s a] feckless dementia ridden piece of crap who decided he wanted a photo op on September 11th.”
— Ian Miles Cheong @ stillgray.substack.com (@stillgray) August 28, 2021
Sgt. Nicole Gee had posted a photo of her cradling an infant on Instagram a week prior to her death. Accompanying the picture, she wrote, “I love my job.”
This, to me, exemplifies the American military. We are strong, but we are also compassionate. We fight when we have to, but we aren’t unnecessarily cruel or heartless. Of course, there are exceptions like the boneheads at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, but our shock at their behavior proves the rule.
The tragedy here is that these 13 deaths didn’t have to happen. They could have, they might have, but with another president in office, the chances that they would have were exceptionally small. The original plan (Trump’s) that the Biden administration abandoned had civilians out first rather than last. There wouldn’t have been the tightly packed crowds offering themselves as targets like the current situation with flights scarce.
It is so hard for me to understand the thinking behind the decisions that led to this outcome. I don’t know who’s doing the ‘thinking’ but I conclude that this is the preferred result for whoever is pulling Joey Ice Cream’s puppet strings. We aren’t this incompetent nor destructive.
Another thing that just short-circuits my brain is the massive amount of armament that Joey Sprinkles basically gifted to our enemies. The mind-numbing scale and sheer numbers are becoming increasingly clear. A graphic going around shows the enormity of the ‘error.’
I assume that these weapons were meant for the Afghan army which, as you can see, totaled some 300,000 troops. But that army disintegrated at the first sign of having to stand on their own two feet. 22,000 Humvees? 358,530 assault rifles? Helicopters? Airplanes?
It’s not just weapons that we used to arm Afghan forces and then fell into Taliban hands. It’s vehicles and equipment that, like Bagram air base, Biden simply ordered be abandoned. Left behind, like American citizens in the streets of Kabul.
The Biden retreat will have worldwide consequences for decades.
I’m not the only one who thinks this whole thing stinks to high heaven, and not just because of what looks like raging incompetence. Roger Kimball suspects it’s more than that.
The question that has not really been pressed about this rather awe-inspiring armory is, why?
Why did we leave it behind to be used by the Taliban?
I don’t believe that question has been addressed with anything like the determination it deserves.
Some people have suggested that it was just a matter of simple incompetence on the part of the Biden administration, particularly the State Department, which is overseeing the evacuation, and the president himself, who apparently chose to ignore advice from some of his advisors about the time table for the evacuation.
But I suspect there is something more insidious than simple incompetence.
What we’re dealing with here is politicized, and therefore, malevolent incompetence.
The U.S. has left American citizens, Afghan interpreters, allies and millions of people at the mercy of the Taliban. But we’ve also left something else behind that is ultimately more damaging:
A suicide bomb attack Thursday outside the Abbey Gate at Kabul’s airport in Afghanistan killed 13 U.S. service members and injured at least 18 more, U.S. officials said – making it the deadliest day for U.S. troops in 10 years.
Officials told Fox News late Thursday that those killed included 10 Marines, two Army soldiers and a Navy corpsman, correcting earlier reports that 12 Marines were killed.
In a press conference, Resident Biden said that he bears “responsibility for fundamentally all that’s happened of late.” Good on him for saying so. But that lasted little more than 30 seconds before he pivoted and pointed fingers at president Trump for setting a deadline by May 1, 2021, implying that the former president was to blame for the violence.
“You know as well as I do that a former president made a deal with the Taliban that he would get all American forced out of Afghanistan by May 1,” Biden said.
U.S. officials in Kabul gave the Taliban a list of names of American citizens, green card holders and Afghan allies to grant entry into the militant-controlled outer perimeter of the city’s airport, a choice that’s prompted outrage behind the scenes from lawmakers and military officials …
But the decision to provide specific names to the Taliban, which has a history of brutally murdering Afghans who collaborated with the U.S. and other coalition forces during the conflict, has angered lawmakers and military officials …
“Basically, they just put all those Afghans on a kill list,” said one defense official, who like others spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive topic. “It’s just appalling and shocking and makes you feel unclean.”
Great imagery, that. Those of us who still have a moral center are outraged over this cataclysmic clown show being run by very stupid people.
Asked about POLITICO’s reporting during a Thursday news conference, President Joe Biden said he wasn’t sure there were such lists, but also didn’t deny that sometimes the U.S. hands over names to the Taliban.
Scum alert: the “Tally-ban,” as Biden calls them, are known for executing Afghans who worked with Americans.
Biden promised us this would not be a Saigon moment and, by golly, it isn’t. It’s a hundred times worse.
He doesn’t have a clue what’s going on. In fact, he admitted that he’s told who to call on when conducting a presser.
While it has become normalized for the president to rely on a list of pre-selected reporters, he made a rather stunning admission in the process.
“Ladies and gentlemen, they gave me a list here. The first person I was instructed to call on was Kelly O’Donnell from NBC,” Biden kicked off the press conference.
Who’s in charge here? Who’s “instructing” the Resident? Is Joe Biden really that incapable? (I know, rhetorical question.)
Josh Hawley called for Biden’s resignation.
To say that today’s loss of American lives in Kabul is sickening does not begin to do justice to what has happened. It is enraging. And Joe Biden is responsible. It is now clear beyond all doubt that he has neither the capacity nor the will to lead. He must resign
Daily Verse | Jeremiah 45:5 Should you then seek great things for yourself? Seek them not.
Happy Thursday, Broadsiders! I splurged on a waterproof encyclopedia for my shower.
The outrage taking place in Afghanistan is almost beyond belief. In my opinion, the situation is the consequence of what was deliberately intended. But it buggers belief to see the extent to which our government has gone to completely screw us over.
I mean that just as it’s written. Our federal government has screwed us, the American people.
The withdrawal process was performed completely backwards from what our military planners know works, resulting in American citizens being stranded in country without the U.S. military conducting evacuations. In essence, if you’re in Afghanistan, it’s up to you to evacuate yourself to the Kabul airport, dodging the Taliban along the way and at the airport. Same if you’re an Afghan ally — you’re on your own unless you get to the airport (on your own).
Just as bad, there’s the staggering amount of deadly weapons that we’ve essentially abandoned to the Taliban and whoever their allies will be (most likely the Russians and Chinese). Have you seen the list?
I think the numbers she cites, plus several others, are in this article in Forbes magazine. You might want to sit down in a soundproof room before clicking that link and reading about the loss that you and I funded.
I can’t confirm the following compilation posted on Facebook by Jon Thompson, who didn’t provide a source for his list. It seems to align, though, with the broad numbers Mollie Hemingway cites above.
The Taliban has seized US weapons left in Afghanistan worth billions — possibly including 600,000 assault rifles, some 2,000 armored vehicles, and 40 aircraft, including Black Hawks, according to reports.
The US gave the Afghan military an estimated $28 billion in weaponry between 2002 and 2017 — including seven brand new helicopters delivered to Kabul just a month ago.
The war chest also included the supply of at least 600,000 infantry weapons — including M16 assault rifles — as well as 162,000 pieces of communication equipment and 16,000 night-vision goggles.
In just two years from 2017 to 2019, the US gave 7,035 machine guns, 4,702 Humvees, 20,040 hand grenades, 2,520 bombs and 1,394 grenade launchers, The Hill noted, citing a report last year from the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR).
I’m sputtering with anger. This isn’t just incompetence. This is a massive, indefensible failure of the greatest magnitude, with ramifications for not only America, but for our allies and most of the rest of the world.
[Dostum] remained an integral part of the government that the U.S. was propping up, and so when Taliban jihadis filmed themselves walking around his unbelievably opulent residence, it was hard not to think about all the rusting bridges, trestles scrawled with graffiti, and pothole-laden roads in America, and wonder if our taxpayer money might have been put to better use …
How could this dedicated military officer and public servant possibly have amassed the funds to pay for his Disneyland dream palace? Why, you and I paid for it, along with all the other American taxpayers. And that’s by no means all that we bought. Dostum wasn’t the only Afghan official who got a luxury home …
In sum, “the waste of taxpayers’ money was astonishing, with ‘ghost’ schools and military forces, counter-narcotic efforts that backfired, dodgy construction and fuel deals siphoning off billions, and cash and gold smuggled out through Kabul airport.”
If president Trump were in office and this happened, Nancy Pelosi would be drawing up her third or fourth set of articles of impeachment by now and marching them over to the Senate in some kind of somber parade — we all know that. The fact that she isn’t tells you all you need to know about her partisanship and the fact that she isn’t a champion of We, the People.
But the media-ocracy has created a terrible situation for the American people. It arranged to install an unqualified cypher as “president” with a cringy and completely unqualified “vice-president” in Kamala Harris. Neither of them should be anywhere near the top of our political structure.
I would like to remind everybody at this point:
Biden didn't have a campaign for president. He just sat in his basement.
The media ran his campaign. They spent the news cycle 24/7 bashing Trump and extolling President Ice Cream Cone Flavor.
“Biden is a media-made mediocrity.” Yet here we are.
If we boot Joe Biden out of the White House (where he is fraudulently squatting), we get Kamala. She would not be an improvement. So we keep Joe Biden?
No one is going to be held accountable for the callous irresponsibility this administration has shown. Biden is merely a sock puppet. He’s a doddering fool and has lost his mental acuity (not that there was much there to begin with). That’s not an insult; that’s the truth.
You should be furious over the humiliating spectacle that is Afghanistan. That’s money that was taken from you and me through profligate taxation and wasted over twenty years in a stone-age country while enriching contractors and the men at the top. It’s always been that way and always will be that way. How do you think Biden became a millionaire while in Washington for 50 years?
The junior commies in Washington are wrecking this country and putting us all in grave danger. They need to be thrown out, and soon.
Daily Verse | Jeremiah 29:13 “You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. I will be found by you,” declares the Lord, “and will bring you back from captivity.”
Happy Monday, my friends. In my opinion, sushi is best served in a vat of bacon.
I was hoping that the weekend would prove that last week was just a bad dream and there would be daisies and unicorns waiting for us this week.
Nah, not really. I knew that our most recent national nightmare was only getting started.
Turns out that the wretched fiasco in Afghanistan just keeps getting worse as the nation formerly known as the United States of America continues to suck at its basic responsibilities. Or, rather, the idiots running the place suck at theirs.
Rep. Michael McCaul, the top Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, told Fox News the U.S. has no intelligence in Kabul outside the airport, marking a victory for the Taliban, Russia, China and Iran.
[…]
“We have no intelligence on the ground now,” he continued. “We are completely dark. With the exception of the airport we will be dark.”
[…]
“That is a victory, not only for the Taliban but for Russia, China and Iran because we can’t see their activities in the region anymore.”
Gee, who screwed up our intelligence, leaving our troops at the mercy of our enemies?
Numerous reports have indicated that the Taliban are tracking or killing anyone found to have connections to the U.S., despite promising to pardon them.
What?! I’m shocked, shocked I tell you, that the Taliban would lie to us! SoME0nE sHUd riTe tHaT dOUn. Might come in handy later.
McCaul told Fox News that he pleaded with the Biden administration for months to evacuate interpreters and Afghan partners.
“They completely failed to do so,” McCaul said. “The intelligence community was very clear and had gave a very grim assessment about the conditions on the ground. The Biden administration chose to ignore that intelligence.”
This is what you get for being suckered into voting for empathy. We’re a nation of emotionally-shriveled lightweights who think they are literally being killed when their feelings get hurt. Empathy is great for a pastor or a counselor, but it’s not the trait you need when dealing with evil malignancies like the Taliban. And Biden, unlike president Trump, does not have a killer instinct — unless it’s chasing down white Americans. Then he’s all business.
“Listen, fat …”
“Empathy” comes from the ancient Greek ἐμπάθεια (empatheia), meaning “physical affection or passion or state of emotion.” Derived from ἐν (en, “in, at”) and πάθος (pathos, “passion” or “suffering”). It literally means, “in passion,” which might be expressed as Bill Clinton did: “I feel your pain.”
Meanwhile, “Robert Charles, a former assistant secretary of state under President George W. Bush, told Fox News there could be as many as 40,000 Americans in the country.” Not just 10,000 or 15,000, which is alarming enough, but nearly three or four times that amount.
40,000 Americans in a country overrun by murderous Islamic jihadists. I wonder how Joe’s empathy is working out for them?
There’s another word that is derived from πάθος (pathos) and fits Biden and his administration better than “empathy.”
